By Scott Wagner
Pen Air FCU is the largest and oldest credit union in Pensacola, Fla., and has been serving its member communities since 1936.
The credit union has $1.2 billion in assets and 18 locations in Northwest Florida and Southeast Alabama. Pen Air recently underwent a rebranding initiative to better convey its mission, vision and core values to a membership that represents more than 1,000 different SEGs.
In an effort to strengthen community ties, Pen Air formed a relationship in 2012 with the Pensacola Blue Wahoos, the Double-A minor league baseball affiliate of the Cincinnati Reds. Pen Air saw a tight cultural fit with the team based on a mutual commitment by the organizations to community and family values. Initially, the credit union worked with the team to place ATMs in multiple locations throughout Pensacola Bayfront Stadium, where the Blue Wahoos play, and soon after created an affinity card program with the team.
In conjunction with the recent rebranding, Pen Air worked with the Blue Wahoos to conduct a sweepstakes, with a primary goal of increasing awareness of the credit union’s new brand. In order to facilitate the sweepstakes and evaluate its effectiveness, Pen Air utilized Member Insight, a proprietary suite of analytics solutions developed by PSCU. The results were nothing short of a grand slam.
The Goals
The overarching goal of the sweepstakes, which was named “Swipe for a Grand Slam,” was to heighten awareness of Pen Air’s new brand and value proposition. A secondary objective was to encourage usage of the credit union’s credit and debit cards at merchandise and concession stands within the stadium.
The Approach
The sweepstakes ran from July 1 to Sept. 7, 2015, during which time Pen Air members were encouraged through the website, social media and ballpark signage to use their credit and debit cards at vendors throughout the stadium. Every time members swiped their card anywhere at the park, their name was entered into a random drawing to win four season tickets for the Blue Wahoos’ upcoming 2016 season; the more swipes, the more sweepstakes entries and the better chance of winning. Members with Pen Air rewards cards also earned one point for every dollar spent. Pen Air staff members set up a table at the Wahoos’ popular Sunday afternoon games to answer questions about the credit union, the contest, and to enroll new members.
The Execution
Pen Air worked with the Wahoos organization to identify merchants with locations at the stadium.
Once the sweepstakes concluded, Pen Air used PSCU’s DataVue data mining solution – part of Member Insight – to easily build a custom report of all member transactions conducted at the ballpark during the sweepstakes period, resulting in the pool of member names used in the drawing. The report was available almost immediately at the close of the sweepstakes and enabled Pen Air to quickly select and announce the name of the winning member.
The Results
According to Pam Hatt, Director of Marketing for Pen Air, “DataVue made this contest possible. The effort to obtain the data for transactions on both debit and credit would have been too cumbersome without it.” Pen Air is currently working to develop new campaigns and strategies using DataVue. The credit union now has a benchmark it can use to track the profitability and value of the Blue Wahoos partnership. Pen Air plans to use Member Insight to continue to track members’ card transaction volume at the ballpark and look for correlations between cardholder usage and how it aligns with advertising and marketing efforts at future Wahoos’ games.
Pen Air has been a PSCU Member-Owner since 2007, utilizing the credit union service organization for credit, debit and prepaid services, as well as contact center and Member Insight support. This sweepstakes is just one example of how Member Insight can empower PSCU member owner credit unions to take a deeper dive into their data. To learn more about Member Insight, visit PSCU.com/MemberInsight.
Scott Wagner is the senior executive responsible for leveraging PSCU’s products and solutions to help credit unions grow while surpassing their members' expectations for service excellence.